And Then There Was One
by nothingtolose18
Summary: Oneshot. Rose is the one remaining Golden Girl. She thinks about her friends who have passed on.


******Disclaimer - This story is set in the Golden Girls universe, after the last episode. I didn't watch The Golden Palace, so ... whatever :p I don't own the Golden Girls, merely a fan.**

******A/N: I am updating this story because there were a couple of typos, and I just realized that I could do so without losing my reviews and favorites. Here goes!**

Rose Nylund sat at her kitchen table, flipping through the newspaper. She took a hearty bite of cheesecake, and washed it down with a sip of steaming coffee.

A whine at the front door snapped her out of her reading, and she realized that Max was ready to go out and do his business.

"Okay, Max," she said, rising from the table and hurrying to the front door. She opened it, clipped her English Sheepdog onto his leash that was tied to the front step, and patted him lovingly on the head. "Just let me know when you're ready to get back in, okay boy?"

"Yes I will, Rose," she said in a squeaky voice, pretending that the dog was talking back to her.

She laughed and went back inside the house.

Funny, after all this time, she still sometimes waited to hear someone to tell her to shut up when she did or said something silly like that. The house still held memories of a time when there were four women bustling about, doing their own thing and living their own lives, but still remaining wonderfully close. Rose missed those days terribly.

She sat back down at the kitchen table, but suddenly she didn't want to read her newspaper. Her coffee tasted all wrong, and even the cheesecake had lost its appeal for the moment.

What Rose wouldn't do to have those three wonderful women back into her life.

Sure, they'd had their fights, but everyone did. Rose had once heard the saying that 'you only fought with those you loved', and she believed it to be true in their case. They'd never seen eye to eye on certain things, but the love had certainly been there.

The first to go was Sophia, which was to be expected. She was a good twenty years older than the rest of them, of course, and Rose was now 73. Sophia had lasted a long time given her age, but age had not come without a price. Sophia had lost her memory in those last years of her life, and some days didn't even remember who Blanche and Rose were. It had killed Rose to see her like that, not knowing who she was or who she was living with. But Blanche and Rose had looked after her the best they could. Dorothy had wanted to look after her herself, of course, but they had insisted that they could do it. After living with Sophia for so long, Rose had felt like she was almost as much _her_ mother as she was Dorothy's. Though it was very upsetting to lose Sophia, Rose could only hope that she'd find peace. She'd hated seeing her suffer all those years.

That had been two years ago. The next year had been time for Dorothy to go, which had taken Rose by complete and utter surprise. Dorothy had always been invincible in her eyes, and Rose honestly thought she would live forever. She'd easily been the strongest of the four of them. But no - her mother's passing had seemed to weaken Dorothy, and the last time Rose had seen her alive, she couldn't believe it was her. She'd always been thin, yes, but now she looked sickly. Her dry sense of humor had even seemed to weaken, and she'd even listened to Rose tell a St. Olaf story. Although she'd changed so much, Rose still didn't believe that she would die so soon, but she did, just a couple of months later. Rose could still remember the feeling she'd gotten in the pit of her stomach when she'd picked up the phone to hear Lucas, Dorothy's widower, on the phone that day. He'd been crying so hard he could barely talk, and before he could get it out, Rose had realized what had happened.

That had left just her and Blanche. Blanche, the savvy, promiscuous woman who Rose had run into all those years ago at the grocery market. They hadn't known at the time that they would be making lifelong friendships. It had hurt Rose, too, to see Blanche's health deteriorate. She'd gone from a confident, sexually active lady to a depressed, celibate woman. She'd still been beautiful, but all Blanche could see when she looked in the mirror that last year of her life was a wrinkled old thing.

And then it had been Blanche's turn. At least that was one comfort with Dorothy dying so far away from her - Rose didn't have to be the one to discover her, like she had with the other two.

_And then there was one... _Rose thought, glancing around. If she tried her hardest, she could catch a glimpse of them sometimes, like a wisp of a memory; turn too quickly to the left, there was Sophia standing at the oven, tasting her spaghetti sauce; step outside on a sunny day, you could almost see Blanche sunning herself on the lanai; walk into the living room with your eyes half shut from sleep, and Dorothy was sitting up on the couch, about to mouth off at Rose for something or other.

Now the apartment was packed up and ready to go - Blanche had left it to Rose in her will, but Rose couldn't bear to stay here anymore. She, along with her dog Max, was going to move into Kirsten's apartment later that day .. but for now, Rose just wanted to sit there and take it all in. The memories, the fights, the cheesecake, the stories ... the love. She thought of when she had heart surgery, and her life was on the line. She'd proposed to the girls that they all freeze their heads so that they could unfreeze and be together again. It had been a silly idea, of course, but right now Rose wished they'd gone through with it .. though she wasn't sure if it would have worked. Could people live without bodies? Rose wasn't one hundred per cent sure.

Rose finished her cheesecake and coffee, went to the sink, and washed her mug and plate. Drying them, she placed them both in the opened, nearly full box on the cupboard labelled 'Dishes'.

Folding the box's flaps so that it was closed, Rose glanced around the kitchen where she'd spent so much of her time for the past twenty years.

"Thank you for being such good friends," Rose whispered aloud, glancing around the room with tears in her eyes. "Thank you, and goodbye."

******A/N: I hope you like it! I almost cried writing it! I love the Golden Girls, but I get so sad watching it and knowing that 3/4 of the ladies have died :( RIP Estelle Getty, Bea Arthur, and Rue McClanahan! Long live Betty White!**


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